San Francisco’s 911 Response Times at a Low Point

(TNS) – Valerie Tucker has a tough job even in ideal conditions. As a 911 dispatcher in San Francisco, she handles a barrage of high-stakes and often traumatic situations every day, coordinating the city’s response to emergency calls.

But right now, conditions are far from ideal. Tucker and her fellow dispatchers are working longer hours and getting fewer breaks. Many are on the verge of burnout, she said. And increasingly, they’re unable to keep up with the constant stream of calls that indicate their city is waking up to a turbulent, post-pandemic status quo.

“It’s dire straits for sure around here, and it’s not getting any better,” Tucker said. “Most of us in the room are starting to (ask), is this worth it?”

According to the Department of Emergency Management, San Francisco’s 911 call dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, the latest month available. That’s the lowest share of any month in the last six years, and well short of the department’s goal to answer 95 percent of calls in 15 seconds or fewer.

A delay of more than 15 seconds may not sound like a lot, but in an emergency situation like a drug overdose, just a handful of moments can mean the difference between life and death, dispatchers said.

“In 15 seconds I can start CPR instructions, get NARCAN administered, give choking instructions to a new mom or dad,” Tucker said. “I can prevent a suicidal person from harming themselves because I say their name and they no longer feel so alone.”

The slowdown in responses has contributed to broader delays San Franciscans face when trying to get help during emergency situations. The city’s typical response time to “Priority A” incidents — defined as the most urgent and serious events, like assaults-in-progress — is slower than it’s been at any point in the last eight years, increasing from about 6.5 minutes in January 2016 to nearly nine minutes this November.

The Chronicle has previously reported on the city’s acute staffing shortage at the 911 dispatch center, and dispatchers have called for additional staffing for years. But since then, dispatchers’ response times have only gotten slower.

What is happening, emergency workers said, is that the number of full-time dispatchers has declined significantly since the pandemic began, while call volumes have increased.

From March 2020 to Dec. 2022 , the number of full-time 911 dispatchers declined from 155 to 123 — nearly 40 short of its goal of 160 fully trained dispatchers. In an interview, DEM executive director Mary Ellen Carroll said the department now has 126 dispatchers and 14 trainees, which she called “incremental progress,” but she added that there’s still a lot to do.

“There’s nothing more important for me right now, as director of this organization, than to work on this issue,” she said, adding that she was “optimistic” things would improve in the coming year, thanks to the department’s addition of a recruiter, increases to workers’ base pay and an effort underway to streamline the intensive background checks dispatchers must undergo.

At the same time, call volumes, which plummeted in 2020 and 2021, have ramped back up to the roughly pre-pandemic rate of nearly 2,000 calls a day, or 81 calls per hour. The growing crush of emergency calls hitting a shrinking staff means department leaders must force the dwindling workers to work “mando,” or mandatory overtime, for months at a time, increasing their risk of burnout.

And with San Francisco’s hiring process taking an average of 255 days last year, new staff are not coming in quickly enough to replace retiring or burned-out workers — especially because it takes a year to fully train a dispatcher.

The city recently pledged to shorten its hiring timeline, which could help alleviate the dispatcher shortage, said Burt Wilson , president of the dispatchers’ union and a current dispatcher. The second biggest thing city leaders could do, he said, is reclassify dispatchers as public safety workers, a designation held by police and firefighters that confers benefits including early retirement and a generous pension. After all, he said, 911 dispatchers are responding to emergencies and working mandatory overtime shifts just like cops and firefighters. When asked if she supported the reclassification Carroll said she was supportive of “anything that is going to bring people to the field and keep the really good people that we have.”

The Mayor’s office did not specifically respond to a question about why it has not reclassified 911 dispatchers as emergency workers. “It’s not just a local issue. This is a national issue,” spokesperson Jeff Cretan said of the understaffing issue, adding that the mayor’s office remains “focused” on improving department response times.

Along with giving dispatchers the same benefits as police, Wilson said he wished city leaders would treat the department’s staffing shortage with the same urgency as they have the police department, which says it is down hundreds of officers. In addition to recently approving a contract that will boost officer pay by 11%, the city is convening a special working group next year to address police staffing, Mayor spokesperson Jeff Cretan previously told the Chronicle.

The reason for the disparity is obvious to Wilson: “Police officers are more visual,” he said. “Before I got this job I never thought of calling 911 or what a 911 dispatcher was.”

But he’s worried that if the city continues to ignore the 911 staffing shortage and workers’ slowing emergency response times, the problem won’t be hidden from the public forever.

“They know it’s a problem. But until somebody important gets killed or hurt, they’re not going to address it,” he said.

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